Black ink tattoo of three vintage-style sewing buttons on the lower stomach, above the waistband of dark jeans.

Three sewing buttons on the lower stomach

Other · Black and grey · Photo

Three round sewing buttons are tattooed in black ink on the lower abdomen, arranged in a loose triangle. The largest button shows four holes and radiating line detail, the lower one has a cross-spoke pattern with a dotted rim, and the smallest has an inner oval with a simple motif. The linework is clean and the shading is solid black and grey, with the skin tone and a lace top and dark jeans framing the image.

Other Button Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind came off the sea at Scarrow Bay and took the tent pegs before the matinee, so the Halloran Travelling Circus had to put its last show on in the church hall. Mrs Bell, who had mended the costumes for thirty-one seasons, sat on an upturned crate with her tin in her lap and counted what was left. There were eleven buttons on the ringmaster's red coat, and the coat needed twelve.

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Ringmaster Joss Halloran would not go on with a coat that gaped. He said the crowd came for the glitter and the glitter needed closing. So she went through the tin: horn buttons from the strongman's waistcoat, a brass one from the lion keeper, pearl ones off a wedding dress the trapeze girl had bought for a wedding that never happened. Her fingers kept coming back to three old coat buttons, worn nearly to the bone, the kind her father used to sell from a barrow in Leeds. The largest had four holes and a sunburst of lines across its face. The next had a cross of spokes and a rim pricked with dots. The smallest held a little oval eye, the one she had kept from the first show her mother ever took her to.

She sewed the coat in the wings by the light of a lamp hung from a nail. When Joss walked out, the hall went quiet, and he looked down at his own chest as though he had never seen it before. Nobody clapped louder than the children at the back, who counted the buttons under their breath and laughed when they got to twelve.

Afterwards the circus folded itself into two lorries and a van. Joss kept the coat on the hook by the door. Mrs Bell went home with her tin, and the three old buttons went back in among the pearls and horn, rattling like small coins dropped down a well.